Like A Star Hope Fell From The Heavens Below

Jigger Cruz questions our traditional understanding of painting by redefining it in terms of process and materiality. Thick layers of paint which often defy the set boundaries of a frame reflect the artists’ rejection of accepted definitions of what a painting is. His artistic process begins by first creating a painting in the classical tradition.

In this diptych, Cruz painted a reconstructed landscape from various places in Germany that he had visited while in residency there. The base is then painted over with thick smears of brightly coloured tube paint, gestural splashes of spray paint, and gouges on the wooden frame. Painting thus becomes a process of creation and destruction, a conscious shift from figuration to abstraction, a transformation of a flat image into a physical object with texture and tactility, which then approaches, and perhaps blurs, our traditional understanding of other artistic forms like sculpture and installation.